Abstract

Materials that exhibit magnetic resonance have recently attracted interest for synthesizing exotic optical properties of metamaterials. However, none of the known naturally occurring materials are magnetic in the optical regime. Here, we present a metamaterial architecture that exhibits strong magnetic resonance at optical frequencies. The building blocks of the structure are aperiodic clusters of silvernanowires that reveal stronger magnetic resonance than their periodic counterparts. A particular realization exhibits more than three times stronger peak magnetic response than an equivalent periodic array. These results suggest that a larger design space is available for the generation of metamaterials.